There are lots of different ways of giving. And we do most all of them in this faith community. Giving of our goods to those who have less, which is what Jesus asked us to do. Giving of our money to help the strange day-to-day reality of the church stay reality, and I promise you, that can never be taken for granted.
Also, I see so many people giving of their abilities – their professional talents, their vocational talents, here at the church and in the world around us. It really knocks me out when I see the talent involved in this place.
But there’s still another way of giving that may be the most foundational of all. We still need these other ways, don’t get me wrong. But this third way is what perhaps underlies everything else. Because with those other ways, we can give and still hold a little bit of ourselves back. But this last way of giving really involves the most self-giving – because it’s about revealing ourselves.
To be fully present to another, and to reveal ourselves in that moment, is a profound act of self-giving.
It’s like what happens in the DOCC program we have here in the fall, and other places, too – it’s just that DOCC is especially set up to support this kind of self-giving. And when I say “revealing ourselves,” I’m not talking about just dumping your whole life story – that would be mere information. In fact, in DOCC, the facilitators are trained to make sure it doesn’t become about information. Certainly, the specifics of our lives are crucial, but that’s not really the core of it. In DOCC, or Sages, or the parents group, or anywhere here, revealing ourselves needs to be about taking relationship further. That’s the real litmus test. Is what we’re doing taking relationship further, or is it keeping it at arm’s length?
I think self-giving in order to go deeper is something God likes a lot – because it’s what we see in this amazing moment with Moses.
Because what this whole burning-bush moment is about is God revealing God’s own self to take relationship further. That self-imparting is, in itself, the gift. Moses doesn’t walk away from the bush with boxes of stuff or professional advice or anything like that; that’s not what God’s giving away. Rather, Moses leaves that moment with a deeper relationship with God because he has a deeper idea of who God is. And that’s what’s critical.
And as monumental as that sounds, remember that all this starts out on a life-as-usual kind of day. Moses is grazing the animals – so, life-maintenance stuff.
And then he wanders beyond those borders – beyond the wilderness that’s at the edges, which I kind of like. And there he finds something odd. It draws him, it attracts him. It’s like the breaking through into regular life of something that isn’t regular, like a little tear in the fabric of life that starts to rip bigger and bigger.
And out of that little opening in the fabric of life bursts a bigger understanding of God than ever before. And the first thing we see is that this is a God who can consume a living thing – a bush – and yet can let that thing remain itself. God doesn’t rob it of its identity. The bush doesn’t burn up. It just burns.
So right off, God’s showing us something about God’s real self. It’s not information – it’s experience of what’s at God’s core, and that’s what draws Moses deeper.
And so then, God goes deeper with him and gives a title. This God isn’t just any deity, and there were plenty of deities running around the Ancient Near East. This God wants no misunderstanding – “I am the God you’ve been hearing about all your life, the one your ancestors knew and loved. There’s unity here – wholeness.” So that’s another thing God shows Moses, us.
And then we get a deeper look into God’s compassion – “I’ve heard my people, I feel their pain” – and also God’s intention to respond, intention to heal. God’s not planning a band-aid fix, but something that’s truly transformative. A land, a whole new grounding.
So we’re finding more and more about who God really is. But then we get the clincher. Suddenly, Moses realizes that finding out about God also means finding out about himself – he’s not just watching tv, man, he’s looking into a mirror. Because he’s part of the work of this God who’s so creative and involved. God doesn’t just stay God “out there.” To know God is, by definition, to become more involved with God – you can’t separate the two.
-- though Moses does try to, at least for a minute. In fact, he responds like lots of us when confronted with God – “but but but….” And when that happens, we find out another thing about this God; it’s a God who says, “I’m not sending you out there alone. I will be with you. And stuff will happen that will make that clear.”
So all this information about God is coming hard and fast. And we probably think it’s plenty – I’m sure Moses thought it was plenty. But just when we think the cup runneth over, we get a bigger cup.
Moses says, “Well um, who am I going to say put me up to all this?” Which is really a fantastic question. Even if there was some fear motivating it, which is really easy to criticize Moses for, it’s also Moses kind of putting his bare foot down and saying he wants to go deeper, too. It’s not enough to just know this is the God of his ancestors. Moses says, in essence, “The past isn’t enough. I need to know who you are now.”
And he gets an answer, one that shows him more about God. He gets a God who, in love and relationship and awesome power, agrees to bring Moses closer to the holy than ever. A God who goes deeper in relationship by imparting more of God’s own self than ever before.
And that happens by God saying, “Ok, I’ll tell you my name. And my name is…. I AM BECOMING…. And that’s what you can tell them.”
Wow – pretty mind-blowing, when you think about it. God is powerful, that much has been clear – and God’s interactive, and God builds relationship. And now we find out that God is so unlike anyone else that God’s very name can’t even be a noun. It has to be a verb; in other words, a word of creativity and action and being.
It’s God’s personal name – where the name Yahweh comes from, right here. The name that Jewish people very wisely won’t even speak, it’s so holy. The word “God,” which we commonly use, is really a more generic word – it means a type, a category, though that’s not the way we use it. But Yahweh is a personal name. It’s like, I’m a woman, but my name is Susan.
God gets personal. Which tells us about both God – and us. Again, the two are inseparable. Because Yahweh isn’t just a name. It tells us what God is like, and in that way, it’s also a promise. A promise, because if God is becoming, then so are we.
What you see around you right now is not all that you get.
That’s pretty much always the case when God makes an appearance – “theophany” is the fancy word for it. It’s really an announcement of a whole new level of life and potential. Like with the annunciation with Mary, an angel saying, “there’s potential and ability here that you got no idea about.” It’s the same thing with Moses. God’s announcements always break in to let us know there’s so much more freedom and ability to act than we realized. Maybe not in the ways of the world – take note, Moses doesn’t become Pharaoh. There’s a difference. God’s in-breaking doesn’t reinforce the ways of the world just by putting us in a higher-up position in the same human structure.
Instead, God’s breaking in shows us power and potential and liberation where we stand now, with our fears and wounds and hopes. That’s how God inverts the world. It’s that first-is-last and last-is-first thing. And Jesus was the one to say it that way, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t all over the Hebrew scriptures. God doesn’t usually change the world by just plopping us into another worldly position. God usually changes the world by showing us more about who we are right where we are – and by showing us that we are not alone.
Those are two very powerful tools – that Moses is given, that we are given. One, you are not equal to your limitations, in God’s view and in God’s work. And two, you aren’t alone in figuring out what that means.
And those two things together mean freedom. Freedom not to be defined by our limitations, but also freedom to embody more fully who we are. The freedom to act.
It’s an awesome thing – maybe that’s really what scares Moses and people and us. Not just that the holy is there, but that it’s trying to free us. That can be scary; we can come to love our little cages.
After all, remember Moses’ reaction of “but but but…” He’s aware of his limitations but not of his freedom.
And to wake him up, it took this unnatural moment when God gets extreme – Extreme God – in order to show what’s there all the time. One human’s radical awareness of God and, as a result, radical self-awareness. One moment when his awareness and openness to God were so heightened that it changed him forever.
God transcends and Moses transcends – both. And everything is different after that. Not because God gave Moses information or strategy or a credit card. But because God gave Moses God’s own self.
And that’s the answer. When Moses asked “how,” God’s answer wasn’t organizational strategy, at first – first, it was relationship. Before all the strategic stuff could be answered, Moses’ understanding of God had to get bigger first. So God enlarged it for him. It’s that little tear, that rip, in the cloth that starts to tear wider.
Which means – the two of them come closer. The view gets bigger when you get closer, and then you carry that with you, even when the Other feels distant.
Moses will carry this, even as he’s far away from this bush – and y’all know enough of the story to know it gets pretty harrowing. But maybe, as Moses stands before Pharaoh and does all these things he had no idea he could do, it’s because he carries that burning bush branded deep inside.
If that hadn’t happened, he could have all the organization in the world, and it wouldn’t have done a bit of good. Everything that happens from here on out comes out of God giving God’s own self to Moses, and thus to the people in his life. And carrying that inside is what gives Moses the confidence to go on, because now he knows a little better whom he’s got confidence in.
Confidence in God isn’t always easy. But when we do manage to stumble on it, it usually has to do with remembering God’s character and history – and then asking who God is now. Like Moses, we too have the chance to say to God, “It’s not enough to know the past. I need to know who you are now.”
So come join DOCC or the Sages or the parents group or the Bridge or whatever grabs you. And get to know a God who is becoming, get to know who you are becoming.
But then you need to take off your sandals. Because that means this becomes your holy place.